From Episcopal Life Online-
The birth of Anglicanism in Japan was the cause for celebrations this week as hundreds of guests -- national, international, ecumenical and interfaith -- traveled to Tokyo to join the local church in marking the 150th anniversary of the Nippon Sei Ko Kai (NSKK).
Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori and Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams were among those who participated in the church's sesquicentennial anniversary celebrations September 22-23.
The NSKK is one of the 38 provinces in the Anglican Communion. It traces its formal origins to June 1859 when the Rev. Channing Moore Williams, missionary priest and later missionary bishop of the U.S.-based Episcopal Church, landed at Nagasaki in southwestern Japan and joined the Rev. John Liggins, who had docked one month earlier. Some years later, other missionaries from England, the U.S. and Canada arrived and began working in Japan.
"We're here tonight to give thanks to God for 150 years of an Anglican presence in Japan," said Jefferts Schori during her sermon at Evening Prayer on September 22. "We are here as well to give thanks for the earliest province of the Anglican Communion which had not been part of the British Empire. I will begin by acknowledging, however, that the Nippon Sei Ko Kai owes its roots to American imperialism instead. Commodore [Matthew C.] Perry's insistence on a trade agreement in 1853-4 was soon followed by the entry of American missionaries who had been serving in China. God continues to work good out of things which did not begin in peace and holiness."
More here-
http://www.episcopal-life.org/79901_114962_ENG_HTM.htm
1 comment:
Thanks for printing this. A neighbor's father was an Episcopal priest in Japan, and her first cousin, the Most Rev. Nathaniel Uematsu, is the primate mentioned in this article. I happened to sit in front of him at the UTO Ingathering at the 2006 convention, turned around and introduced myself not knowing who he was. As we talked it turned out he was my friend's cousin--he gave me a family picture to give Keiko, and asked me to tell her he'd just become primate of Japan. That was a pretty exciting piece of news to deliver. He's a very nice man. He studied in the diocese of Missouri, I think, where he was ordained. --Keiko told me it was not easy to be Christian in Japan; when her grandfather became a Christian, he was ostracized by the rest of the family.
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